A NASA picture of a Mars rock looks just like Nabu, the Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom and writing dating back to 2000 BCE, say alien enthusiasts who are convinced the image on the stone was carved out deliberately by intelligent extraterrestrial beings.

According to comments spreading online across the globe, it is either just another unusually shaped rock (scientists say), or a Babylonian-like carving (UFO enthusiasts).

Several weird explanations have been offered for a number of different rocks photographed by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, including a polar bear, a crashed drone armed with a mysterious weapon, a sinister woman and a crab monster.

“As you can probably tell, it is a natural rock at the disrupted rim of a small crater, not a sculpture made by some ancient culture. But it’s great that people are using their imaginations and enjoying the full public access to every image taken by any Mars rover.”

NASA’s current focus is on directing the Curiosity Rover to a group of active dunes – as wide as a football field and as tall as a two-storey building. Hopefully, they will provide useful data on the Red Planet’s environment.

Scientists put these bizarre ‘sightings’ down to Pareidolia – a psychological phenomenon where an image or sound makes a person think or imagine something is there when it is not. This often occurs when we see objects in cloud formations.